Montreal-born billionaire hints at run for New York mayor

Michael Bloomberg says Montreal-born billionaire should run for mayor

Billionaire press baron Mortimer Zuckerman, the Montreal-born former rival of Conrad Black, says he is being encouraged to run for New York mayor — by the man who holds the title.

“I would love to be in that job,” said Mr. Zuckerman in a New York Times article Monday hinting that current Mayor Michael Bloomberg — a fellow billionaire media magnate — was considering the 75-year-old as a potential successor.

Mr. Zuckerman told the paper that Mr. Bloomberg had recently talked to him about a possible run in the November election, adding that he was “not the only person.”

“A lot of people have talked to me about that possibility,” he said.

“If I could be appointed, I’d probably be serious about it.”

The son of Russian immigrant parents and the grandson of an Orthodox rabbi, Mr. Zuckerman was raised in a middle-class Jewish home in Montreal’s Outremont neighbourhood.

Moving to the United States in 1961, Mr. Zuckerman first made his name in the Boston real estate market before making his foray into publishing with the 1980 purchase of The Atlantic Monthly.

In the early 1990s, Mr. Zuckerman found himself locked in a bidding war with fellow Montrealer and McGill alumnus Conrad Black over the ownership of the New York Daily News.

Lord Black initially secured the support of the paper’s managers, but they were forced to switch their allegiance after Mr. Zuckerman won the critical backing of the paper’s unions.

Ten years later, the two Montrealers publicly crossed paths again when Mr. Zuckerman’s name was floated as a possible saviour for Lord Black’s company Hollinger Inc.

“He would be a strong candidate and a brilliant mayor,” wrote Lord Black in a Tuesday email to the Post.

Mr. Zuckerman has since sold off his stake in The Atlantic as well as Fast Company, but he remains the chairman and editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, as well as publisher of the Daily News. With a reported wealth of $2.4-billion, Mr. Zuckerman is the 188th richest man in the United States, according to Forbes.

Although he became an American citizen in 1977, traces of his Canadian accent can still be heard when he says the word “outhouse,” Mr. Zuckerman told a New York real estate periodical in 2011.

A regular columnist and frequent TV commentator on PBS, CNN, Fox and even The Colbert Report, in 2010 Mr. Zuckerman briefly considered a run against New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand — although he dropped out for family reasons. As he told the Daily News at the time, he did not feel able to devote “unhindered attention” to an election campaign.

Just like Mayor Bloomberg, who was a member of the Democratic Party, won the mayor’s seat on the Republican ticket and is now finishing his third and final term as an independent, Mr. Zuckerman’s politics are sometimes hard to pinpoint.

‘He would be a strong candidate and a brilliant mayor’

He endorsed Barack Obama in the pages of the Daily News in 2008. Nevertheless, within months of Inauguration Day the disillusioned businessman published a scathing critique of the Obama presidency entitled “He’s Done Everything Wrong.”

Three years later, on the eve of the 2012 election, Mr. Zuckerman declared that Mr. Obama’s leadership was “so lacking that the American dream now seems to be a chimera of nostalgia.”

Although he has been plenty visible among New York social circles, little is known of Mr. Zuckerman’s personal life thanks to his ownership of one of New York’s most prolific gossip-mongers.

Rival tabloid The New York Post also steers clear of delving into Mr. Zuckerman’s family affairs, reportedly due to a truce worked out with Post owner Rupert Murdoch.

Married to art curator Marla Prather from 1996 to 2001, Mr. Zuckerman’s past girlfriends include author Nora Ephron, future new media pioneer Arianna Huffington and — for a four-year period in the late 1980s and early 1990s — noted feminist Gloria Steinem.

In her 1991 book Revolution From Within, Ms. Steinem wrote that she abandoned her feminist principles during the relationship, although she does not mention Mr. Zuckerman by name.

In 2008, along with director Steven Spielberg and the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, Mr. Zuckerman was one of the most high-profile victims of financial fraudster Bernie Madoff.

Mr. Zuckerman has a long history of working with Jewish charities, has been described as a hawkish supporter of Israel and during the early 2000s he served as chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

Just three weeks ago, Mr. Zuckerman announced his largest ever-endowment: a $200-million grant to establish a Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University.

Speaking at the Dec. 17 announcement of the donation, Mayor Bloomberg declared that the gift would “unlock the workings of neurological and psychiatric disorders, and help liberate humankind from the suffering they produce.”